Sanabria Emilia
Anthropologist, Research Fellow, CNRS
Habilitée à diriger des recherches (HDR)
Contact: emilia.sanabria(at)cnrs.fr
Research
I am an anthropologist and my research is situated at the crossroads of the anthropology of health, care and the body and Science and Technology Studies (STS). I hold a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and from 2011 to 2018 was lecturer at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, before joining the CNRS as a full-time researcher in October 2018.
My recent publications include Plastic Bodies: Sex hormones and menstrual suppression in Brazil, published by Duke University Press in 2016. Based on an ethnography of the circulation of hormonal contraceptives, the book proposes to read the body as eminently plastic. Plastic Bodies received the Michelle Z. Rosaldo and Diana Forsythe prizes from the American Anthropological Association in 2017.
I am currently PI of a project entitled "Healing Encounters: Reinventing an indigenous medicine in the clinic and beyond". This project aims to develop a symmetrical, ethnographically grounded theory of what healing entails from the perspective of those who give, receive or evaluate healing. It studies the striking expansion and prolific reinventions of healing practices that make use of the Amazonian herbal brew ayahuasca. The unprecedented globalization of this indigenous medicine provides a unique opportunity to study healing encounters ethnographically.
Main publications
- Sanabria, E. 2019. Towards an anthropology of encounters: ayahuasca’s multiplicity and the politics of knowledge. HDR (Habilitation à diriger des recherches), Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon
- Sanabria, E. 2018. Endurance and alterability. Correspondences. Cultural Anthropology
- Hardon, A. and Sanabria, E. 2017. “Fluid Drugs: Revisiting the Anthropology of Pharmaceuticals.” Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 46:117-132
- Talin, P. and Sanabria, E. 2017. “Ayahuasca’s entwined efficacy: An ethnographic study of ritual healing from ‘addiction’.” International Journal Drug Policy. Vol. 44 pp23-30
- Sanabria, E. 2016. Plastic Bodies: sex hormones and menstrual suppression in Brazil. Experimental Futures series, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press
- Sanabria, E. 2016. “Circulating Ignorance: Complexity and Agnogenesis in the Obesity ‘Epidemic’.” Cultural Anthropology 31(1) pp131–158
- Brives, C.; Le Marcis, F. & Sanabria, E. 2016. “What’s in a Context? Tenses and Tensions in Evidence-Based Medicine.” Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 35(5) pp369-376
- Sanabria, E. & Yates-Doerr, E. 2015. “Alimentary uncertainties: from contested evidence to policy.” BioSocieties, 10(2):117-124
- Sanabria, E. 2015. “Sensorial pedagogies, hungry fat cells and the limits of nutritional health education.” BioSocieties, 10(2):125-142
- Sanabria, E. 2014. “‘The same thing in a different box:’ similarity and difference in pharmaceutical sex hormone consumption and marketing.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 28(4):537-555
- Edmonds, A. & Sanabria, E. 2014. “Medical borderlands: engineering the body with plastic surgery and hormonal therapies in Brazil.” Anthropology & Medicine. 21(2):202-216
